Barbican
Christmas Oratorio, AAM, Egarr, BarbicanWednesday, 23 December 2015
Relatively recent tweaks to the abundant London concert scene have resulted in top-end events right up to Christmas. We have in part to thank the seasonal festival at St John’s Smith Square, postponing the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s... Read more... |
Pires, LSO, Harding, BarbicanThursday, 17 December 2015
Imagine knowing Hamlet as a four-act play, or The Ambassadors without its bottom third. Imagine Mozart’s Requiem as a torso that halts eight bars into the Lacrymosa, or Mahler’s Tenth as the lone Adagio (as, indeed it too often appears). We... Read more... |
Zazà, BBCSO, Benini, BarbicanSunday, 29 November 2015
Send in the clowns, as they sing in this palace-of-varieties first act, not for Pagliacci, Leoncavallo’s sole foothold on today’s operatic repertoire, but for the fool-for-love heroine of a sparkling, swooning rarity. Musically, Zazà is a notch... Read more... |
Jazz Voice, BarbicanSaturday, 14 November 2015
Featuring the usual, divertingly eclectic mix of singers from the worlds of jazz, pop and soul, last night’s Jazz Voice announced the opening of the 2015 EFG London Jazz Festival with a programme that satisfied both aficionado and newbie alike.... Read more... |
Henry V, RSC, Barbican TheatreFriday, 13 November 2015
Pro patria mori. Now there’s the test for Henry V - perform it on Remembrance Day. The “band of brothers” shtick relies on an idea of patriotism from an age when there was no need to define something so heartfelt, and an idea that kings and... Read more... |
Tamerlano, Il Pomo d'Oro, Emelyanychev, BarbicanWednesday, 11 November 2015
The curse of Tamerlano strikes again. The last time London saw Handel’s darkest and most sober opera was in 2010. Graham Vick’s production for the Royal Opera House lost its unlikely star Placido Domingo before it even opened in London, ran... Read more... |
Benedetti, LSO, Gaffigan, BarbicanSaturday, 07 November 2015
A full house for a premiere performance: Wynton Marsalis bucks the trend in contemporary music. He’s an established name, more for his jazz than his classical work. But in recent years he has produced a substantial body of orchestral music, so the... Read more... |
The World of Charles and Ray Eames, BarbicanFriday, 06 November 2015
Chairs, chairs, chairs, as far as the eye can see. Plywood or plastic shells, some decorated with hilarious drawings of jolly nudes by Saul Steinberg (main picture), others in all the colours you can imagine – stacks, in rows, alluring and all so... Read more... |
10 Questions for Nicola Benedetti and Wynton MarsalisTuesday, 03 November 2015
He’s an American jazz giant; she’s a Scottish doyenne of the classical violin. Anyone familiar with one more than the other – and that’s more or less everyone – would do a double take to see their names on the same bill. But this week at Barbican... Read more... |
Fröst, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Chailly, BarbicanSaturday, 24 October 2015
Final thoughts: a fitting theme for the farewell concert of this year’s Gewandhaus Barbican residency. But the connections proved tenuous: Death and Transfiguration, the gloomy opener, was written when Strauss was only 25, and the Mozart Clarinet... Read more... |
Tetzlaff, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Chailly, BarbicanFriday, 23 October 2015
In practice as well as in prospect, the second in Riccardo Chailly’s Strauss/Mozart trilogy was a concert of two very different halves. The first offered small Bavarian and Austrian beer in the shape of Strauss’s fustian Macbeth, unbelievably close... Read more... |
Pires, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Chailly, BarbicanWednesday, 21 October 2015
Riccardo Chailly’s Strauss odyssey with his Leipzig orchestra peaked in Saxony last year, the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth. I was lucky to catch a razor-sharp Till Eulenspiegel and a saturated Death and Transfiguration in Dresden’s... Read more... |
